Particularly in the mail-order business, and above all in the wholesale mail-order business, order consignments for specific customers have to be assembled from what is often a very large stock of different articles. In practice the articles required for a particular order consignment are taken by hand from fixed racks containing articles of the same kind and are placed on a circulating rack-like container that is assigned to a particular consignment. After completing and checking the consignment it is packed by hand and dispatched. The contents of the fixed racks for the articles have to be checked and the racks restocked. For this purpose the articles have to be unpacked from a pack that has been supplied to and inspected at a goods receiving point, taken to the racks by a conveyor system and there transferred by hand. This procedure is not only inconvenient, time-consuming and wasteful of space, but also is a source of mistakes. As a result of the manual handling articles may be taken from or placed in the wrong storage rack. Restocking of racks may be overlooked, and the articles that have nevertheless been supplied via the conveyor system carried on to an overflow area in which they remain until, also by hand, the overflow area is emptied. Since the storage rack will still be short of the article concerned, this can result in further articles being called up from the receiving point or associated storage racks and possibly also to orders for further supplies being issued even though in fact there is still an adequate stock of the articles available. The procedure used in practice therefore also has economic disadvantages. In fact it is desirable on economic grounds to keep the turn-round time of the articles from their supply to their inclusion in a specific customer order consignment as short as possible, while still being able to deal with all the incoming customer orders completely and as quickly as possible. The aim here is to provide a 24-hour service.
A first step towards achieving this is provided by computer-controlled automatic consignment-assembly units. One such unit is provided for example in EP-A-183 074. This known consignment-assembly unit includes stock containers arranged in the form of chutes in rows and columns and running from a loading to an unloading end. At the unloading end there is a dispensing device with a counter. The various stock containers are refilled by hand with the respective articles to be stored temporarily in them when an alarm signal indicates that the content has fallen below a minimum level. A computer controls the dispenser of each stock container according to whether there is a specific customer consignment order so that at a predetermined time one or more of the articles is or are supplied to an outward conveying system such as a conveyor belt. The delivery takes place at a time determined by the computer in such a way that the various articles making up an order arrive assembled in a pile at the discharge end of this outward conveying system and can be suitably packed. On packing it is necessary to check for completeness, since there is no assurance that the respective storage containers will in fact have been refilled. Furthermore the disadvantages in supplying such an automatic consignment-assembly unit indicated above can still occur. These disadvantages also occur if the computer gives an alarm signal at a device for dispensing the article as well as at the stock container concerned.
There is therefore a need for a procedure that is automated to the greatest possible extent.
This procedure must take into account that many articles are delivered by a supplier only in the form of packs or giant packs; that although many articles are ordered very often, there are others that are very seldom ordered; and that this situation may change with time, for example on seasonal grounds.